By day I’m an interlibrary loan bounty hunter for the Metropolitan Library System. By night I’m husband, father, and a student pursuing a Master’s of Library and Information Sciences degree. In the space between I write, draw, and cope with a chronic condition of “hobbyism.” This means a lot of things interest me, and I engage in those interests with a bottomless well of enthusiasm that I draw from a pocket dimension using forbidden sorceries.

My bonafides include a BA in English literature with a focus on medieval romance; this is a fancy pants phrase for really old stories about questing knights, dragons, and ogres (oh my!) This book learnin’ has given me a vast arsenal of words and a fair grasp of how to put them together to make moving pictures in your brain computer. I write fantasy and sci-fi mostly but also dabble in essays and criticisms – you can take the kid out of the English department, but you can’t take the English department out of the kid.

FAQ-thingies:

What is House Johnston and this “Never Unprepared” thing?

You know how the houses in Game of Thrones have house words? Mottos such as, “Winter is coming, Ours is the Fury, We do not Sow,” etc? Well, that was a real on noble coats of arms in the Middle Ages. Several years ago, I discovered that my family name’s coat of arms had the phrase, “nunquam non paratus” written underneath. This translates to – you guessed it – Never Unprepared. It’s metal as shit, and I’ll own it, and it’s something that I strive toward (but fail at a lot.)

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My name is Brandon. I'm a writer, cartoonist, husband, and father. This is the online space where I talk about life, family, art, videogames, and anything else that interests me. Disclaimer: a lot of things interest me.

Kvothe and the Cthaeh: Kingkiller Chronicle Fan Art

Today I decided to draw something NOT from one of my own stories, but from one of my favorite stories ever. If you’ve not had the pleasure of reading any Patrick Rothfuss, do yourself a favor and rectify that egregious error. I’m obsessed with his Kingkiller Chronicles series and read it twice a year because it’s that damn good. It’s important to note that the audio books, narrated by Nick Podehl, are one of the best performances I’ve ever had the pleasure of experiencing and they make the story even more incredible. In the above scene the protagonist, Kvothe, encounters a shadowy figure, known as the Cthaeh, that hangs out in the branches of a huge tree pulling the wings off butterflies for sadistic pleasure. The Cthaeh is sort of chaos oracle that basically tells Kvothe a whole bunch of terrible shit with the design that Kvothe will go back out into the world and create more chaos.